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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 9087302" data-attributes="member: 70468">I don’t normally visit the 5e forum here, so I missed this thread since it wasn’t in the older edition forum. I’m probably late to the discussion, but I figured I’d add my 2¢.I grew up in the ’80s but somehow missed D&D, so (outside of Baldur’s Gate) my first real D&D was 3e at the gaming club in college. The first few campaigns I played were hack and slash. There might have been some conceit (like one character was Snow White while the rest of us were the seven dwarves), but most of our time was spent killing monsters. Some of us split off into our own group from that group. A few people ran things. I also got to DM my first campaign, which is still remembered by players in my group twenty years later, but it was heavy-handed in ways I wouldn’t want to do now.We eventually did other games for a while (a lot of Mage: the Awakening 1e, some Dogs in the Vineyard one-shots, a brief Unknown Armies campaign). Eventually, I ran 3.5e again for a bit before we switched to 4e when it came out. I ran 4e for a while before that group imploded due to some player issues, then I ran Pathfinder 1e. I started with APs (Council of Thieves, Kingmaker, Rise of the Runelords, Shattered Star), though Kingmaker is the only one we finished. After that, I started doing my own stuff and trying other systems (Dungeon World, Fate).I recall finding a retroclone back in college, but I don’t remember which one it was. I want to say Basic Fantasy, but I don’t think the timeline matches because I graduated back in 2006, and that’s when Wikipedia says it was first released. I never ran it though. A bit after that I discovered Grognardia, which I’d describe as very influential. I was disappointed when it stopped updating and very pleased when it started again a few years ago.The thing that appeals to me is it seems my group likes to do exploration-oriented campaigns, and OSR games tend to have more mechanics for that kind of play out of the box. I ran Pathfinder 2e for a while, but I found myself trying to incorporate stuff from Old-School Essentials. When I burnt out on PF2, we attempted the switch. I think it worked better for me then my players. It was a bit too streamlined for their tastes. We switched to WWN, but I still used a lot of exploration stuff from OSE. I eventually created my homebrew system because neither really did what I wanted.As a GM and referee, there are a few things about old-school rules that appeal to me:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Exploration procedures (and focus). I want the game to do what I want out of the box. Games like B/X provide that.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Smaller numbers. A couple of dice with no modifiers can be a meaningful amount of damage.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Static difficulties. I don’t particularly like picking DCs. I’d rather these be relatively static, so PCs actually get better, and players can reason about their actions.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Simple monsters. Most values are derived from HD (or level). Make it quick and simple for me to get the numbers I need. I want the system to take care of the tuning.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Adventures. I particularly like Necrotic Gnome’s, but there are a bunch of good adventures focused on providing sites or situations. I’m not interested in running anything that’s too focused on a story anymore (like an AP).</li> </ul>There are some old-school things that don’t align with how I want to run my game. I’m not interested in the amount of prep it can require to do a sandbox properly, but I still want to run one. I don’t want to make rulings. There are other games (particularly PbtA and FitD games) that do do those things the way I want, so I’ve incorporated some of their ideas regarding rules and the referee’s relationship to them and play.</blockquote>

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